Tuesday, June 02, 2009

In a stunning upset endorsement vote, D.I.D. chose Pete Gleason for the 1st Council District candidate Tuesday night. In a vote that initially gave Gleason the endorsement by only 2 votes, after a recount he clearly won by 64-52. This places him in a position to seriously challenge Alan Gerson’s bid for a third City Council term despite numerous speakers touting his record. Apparently, that support for Gerson fell on deaf ears.

And, there was a subtext to two other races which were initiated against two of D.I.D.’s popular District Leaders, Adam Silvera and Jean Grillo. Both were easily re-elected despite attempts at club stacking and political threats. While David Reck was also re-elected, he received a very high number of "No-endorsement" votes, despite the fact that he had no opponent.

The other contentious races had Yetta Kurland seriously challenging Speaker Chris Quinn. Quinn lost in a second vote for the City Council seat, bolstered by 11th hour maneuvers by Derr and Fouratt who spoke during the re-vote from the floor. Since Quinn actually won the vote but wanted a greater clarification of support, the real question is why Fouratt (who essentially did no campaigning according to Sweeney) received 10 votes -- and why both he and Derr threw their votes to Kurland in tendem so expeditiously. So, while Quinn actually won the endorsement vote, the re-vote (which Quinn pressed for) was changed by multiple last minute endorsements for Kurland. There have been rumors that this was engineered and augmented through the use of palm cards and a previous strategy by anti-Quinn forces. Hey, that's politics! Kurland is now the D.I.D. candidate. However, Quinn did garner the outright endorsement of the Stonewall Democratic Club.

Cy Vance with 17 votes and Leslie Crocker Snyder with 18 votes were both heavily outvoted by Richard Aborn for District Attorney. While Vance has had some campaign mis-steps, the Snyder results were surprising to some in view of her strong showing in the last general election when she ran against Morgenthau. While Vance consented to be interviewed in the SoHo Journal, Snyder declined the invitation citing legal complications. Aborn has not yet responded to a request.